There are still disgruntled Clinton supporters to deal with. Of course, few of them are as utterly fanatical as Lanny Davis but there are enough Clinton supporters out there who will be plenty mad if Hillary Clinton is not selected as the Vice Presidential candidate and who will be more than willing to take their anger out on the Obama campaign in the fall. And yet, if Obama selects Clinton as his Vice Presidential candidate, he will have to deal with the dysfunctional and nightmarish alternate reality she and her cohorts will doubtless bring into his campaign.

This post could have been titled “Thoughts That Bring Joyful Schadenfreude Into the Hearts of John McCain Supporters.”

Right on target. The McCain campaign has done nothing to suggest that people should vote against Barack Obama because of his name or background. And it is utterly wrong of Obama to suggest otherwise. Obama is perfectly free to take issue with and take on McCain’s critiques of his candidacy. But he should actually argue against McCain instead of some straw man that Obama says is McCain.

You know, this Internet thing is really useful for calling shenanigans on the characterizations of opposing political arguments. Maybe Barack Obama would like to keep that sort of thing in mind the next time he is tempted to put words in John McCain’s mouth.

The Los Angeles Times properly points out that despite all expectations, Barack Obama has done nothing to open up a lead against John McCain. Quite the contrary; he has allowed McCain to hang around and is giving him a chance to take the race in the end. This despite one week of adulatory coverage while Obama was overseas and despite a fair amount of turmoil in the McCain camp organizationally.

The Times wonders whether all of this is attributable to the tough and bitter primary fight Obama had with Hillary Clinton. It is likely that a fair amount of it is, but how about asking whether Obama’s big government philosophy is really what Americans are looking for in their next President? I know that we are supposed to be entering an age of renewed liberalism but you would think that in such a situation, we would see more than the occasional Obamacon/can deserting the Republican Party and deciding to vote for the presumptive Democratic nominee. The Republican coalition is not in the best of shape, to be sure, but it is not nearly in the disastrous shape that so many believed it to be. In trying times, it is hanging surprisingly tough.

Maybe that will change in time. If I had to bet, I would still say that Obama will win the election. But with every day that he fails to close the deal, he gives John McCain a chance to prove me wrong. And McCain appears more than willing to take the opportunity Obama seems determined to give him.

For the first two weeks on the new site, we did really good about blogging on state and local politics. Let’s keep it up.

Here’s my challenge: next post you write, write about your state representative or state senator. Let’s keep the initiative. Be sure to put the name of your state in the tags.

JUST TO BE CLEAR: Write about the people representing you in your state legislature not Congress or write about your county commissioner, city councilman, mayor, sheriff, etc.

Let’s get in the habit of covering our local politics because some of our local guys will one day run for higher office. We should start covering them now.

John McCain’s campaign manager, Rick Davis, called out Obama today saying, “Barack Obama has played the race card, and he played it from the bottom of the deck. It’s divisive, negative, shameful and wrong.”

The media, though, is denying that Obama played the race card. They do not want to believe that their golden boy has stooped so low, so soon.

By the way, do you notice a pattern? When a Democrat fails to meet expectations, he plays the race card. Obama has bottomed out in the Gallup Daily Tracking Poll, losing his 9 point bounce. So what does he do? He pulls out the Democrat Standard Book of Tactics and throws the race card on the table.

The media is denying that Obama is pulling the race card.

They are foolish to be so willingly blind. Why? Because Obama has said this stuff before and the media recognized the race card.

Let’s examine the transcripts:

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There you go ladies and gentlemen. Barack Obama has let loose with where he actually stands — that is directly against you, the American people.

You can listen to Rush talking about it here. He rightly draws the connection to Jimmy Carter’s policies.

Next, I suppose, Obama will advocate the maximum speed limit be 55 mph again.

First, let’s point out that he’s full of it on this. This is one of those statements that is not true, when you look into it, but the Washington Post will never devote a front page story to debunking Obama on something like this.

Second, what Barack Obama precisely fails to mention is anything having to do with lowering the price of a gallon of gasoline.

Consider Barack Obama’s own ad, the transcript of which is here.

Barack Obama thinks high gas prices deserve serious answers, and a serious plan: Crack down on oil speculators, raise mileage standards and fast track alternative fuels.

These are not the answers of serious men.

We already know cracking down on oil speculators will have a de minimis impact on the price of oil. Why? Because they’ll go overseas and play in the exact same market.

Raising mileage standards will take a long time to deploy and does nothing to increase supply.

Fast tracking alternative fuels? Like ethanol? We’re already artificially keeping that price high through import tariffs Obama does not want to reduce. And how the hell are else are we suppose to fill up our cars?

Seriously, and this is the central point of contention you cannot ignore Barack Obama offers exactly nothing to deal with the high price of gas by the gallon. Unless he advocates the federal government buying every American a brand new car that can accept his alternative fuels, he offers no relief.

Inflating your tires and getting a regular tune-up sounds more like Obama’s plan for ego maintenance than it does for helping American families.

Well, this was supposed to go up at 12:03 p.m., but somehow did not.

So here we are close to 2 o’clock. Let’s make this a general open thread.

Been on since 6am EDT. If you are interested, you can listen here. We cover local, state, and national news. We’ve had a lot of fun at the Obamessiah’s expense this morning.

UPDATE: Oh, you’re probably going to want to be listening at 8:37 a.m. EDT.

Well done you effete snob, but race has nothing to do with it.*

Barack Obama has finally pulled the race card against John McCain and the Republicans. You know, Mr. “I transcend politics” has finally, tacitly admitted he is just a typical politician by accusing those who don’t like him of being racist.

“Nobody thinks that Bush or McCain have a real answer for the challenges we face. So what they are going to try to do is make you scared of me,” Obama warned, **“You know he’s not patriotic enough. He’s got a funny name. You know, he doesn’t look like all of those other presidents on the dollar bills.”**

Jake Tapper has an absolute must read on this.

And just to clarify, those of us who don’t like Obama aren’t racist. We just think he’s a petty, shallow politician with a vain streak that makes Narcissus look humble.

Oh, and we know he has skin so thin at some point his whining is going to blow up in his face. He can’t take what we’re going to be dishing out for 97 more days.

*Maybe this is why Obama won’t speak up for Steve Cohen in TN-09.

Once again, we are reminded that decreasing demand lowers the price of a commodity:

The drop in oil prices has come as gasoline demand in the United States fell sharply in recent months, thanks to Americans cutting back on their driving. Gasoline consumption fell 3.6 percent in the week ending July 18, compared with the year-earlier period, according to the Energy Department. Americans drove 9.6 billion fewer miles in May compared with the same period last year, a 3.7 percent decline and the biggest-ever drop at that time of year, the Transportation Department said on Monday.

And you know what? It didn’t take a windfall profits tax or increased regulations on speculation to bring any of this about. Something to keep in mind while the current Presidential campaign rages.

Yeah, this gives me all sorts of faith in the media’s ability to remain objective during this election cycle:

When Obama walked on stage at the McCormick Center, many journalists in the audience leapt to their feet and applauded enthusiastically after being told not to do so. During a two-minute break halfway through the event, which was broadcast live on CNN, journalists ran to the stage to snap photos of Obama.

The Illinois senator talked about his trip overseas, reiterating his opinion that violence is down in Iraq but worsening in Afghanistan. And he expressed his approval of the Senate’s passage of a major housing bill to help homeowners avert foreclosure.

Obama, who acknowledged that he needed a nap, stood up to say farewell to the audience of journalists, many of whom gave him another standing ovation.

(The following is not sarcasm, however): Of course, given that even the likes of Dana Milbank are beginning to get tired of the arrogance that now emanates from the Obama campaign, there is the possibility that the media will regain its sobriety. The question is whether it will be able to do so before Election Day.

We’ve added to the RedState store. You can pick up a host of items including these two new designs:

Some person at Vox Nova, a Catholic site I don’t read, has up a post complaining about the “childishness” of the “nonsense” at RedState.

Naturally, this person was banned here and ran back there to complain about us. He (it’s got to be a he because the person whines like a girl, but a girl would generally not sound so pretentious), however, wanted to complain about our stifling of dissent, but has a “comments are closed” notice at the bottom of his post.

Some people just need to suck it up.

UPDATE: Several hours after this post went up, he opened the comments to let his friends cry in agreement with him in his comments.

UPDATED and BUMPED: According to the Politico late yesterday, the Democrats have denied a request by Cohen for money to fight off Nikki Tinker. But, the Congressional Black Caucus has given Nikki Tinker $5,000.00 and additional fundraising support from Stephanie Tubbs Jones.

The answer to the question is no. It is, in fact, the only acceptable answer and if you think otherwise, RedState is not a good fit for you.

But I ask the question because it raises an important point about the media, the Democrats, and Barack Obama himself.

We are, each year, treated to national media reports on race relations in this country and they invariably discuss white America coming to terms with other races in this country. Very, very rarely does the media ever report on other races coming to terms with white America.

It is not really relevant, frankly, to point out that most black voters are going to vote in droves for Barack Obama. Regardless of his race, black voters would vote for the Democrat. But when you read about Congressman Steve Cohen’s race in Tennessee’s Ninth Congressional District, you really are confronted by both racism and anti-semitism in a way we rarely think about in this country. And the media is silent. Barack Obama is silent.

Steve Cohen just might lose his re-election not because he has been ineffective in representing his district, but because he is white. And a number of black members of Congress are happy about that.

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Remember this essay by law professor Cass Sunstein–who taught at the University of Chicago but will now be going to Harvard? In it, Sunstein assures readers that as a result of teaching at one of the more right-of-center law schools in the country, Barack Obama has had a unique and valuable exposure to right-of-center thinking that makes him impossible to pigeonhole as a conventional contemporary liberal. Quoth Sunstein:

[Obama} is strongly committed to helping the disadvantaged, but his University of Chicago background shows. He appreciates the virtues and power of free markets. In some of his most important disagreements with Senator Clinton, he suggested caution about mandates and bans, and stressed  the value of freedom of choice.

Comes now this article in the New York Times. Its take is . . . er . . . different:

At a formal institution, Barack Obama was a loose presence, joking with students about their romantic prospects, using first names, referring to case law one moment and "The Godfather" the next. He was also an enigmatic one, often leaving fellow faculty members guessing about his precise views.

[. . .]

But Mr. Obama’s years at the law school are also another chapter — see United States Senate, c. 2006 — in which he seemed as intently focused on his own political rise as on the institution itself. Mr. Obama, who declined to be interviewed for this article, was well liked at the law school, yet he was always slightly apart from it, leaving some colleagues feeling a little cheated that he did not fully engage. The Chicago faculty is more rightward-leaning than that of other top law schools, but if teaching alongside some of the most formidable conservative minds in the country had any impact on Mr. Obama, no one can quite point to it.

“I don’t think anything that went on in these chambers affected him,” said Richard Epstein, a libertarian colleague who says he longed for Mr. Obama to venture beyond his ideological and topical comfort zones. “His entire life, as best I can tell, is one in which he’s always been a thoughtful listener and questioner, but he’s never stepped up to the plate and taken full swings.”

[. . .]

Nor could his views be gleaned from scholarship; Mr. Obama has never published any. He was too busy, but also, Mr. Epstein believes, he was unwilling to put his name to anything that could haunt him politically, as Ms. Guinier’s writings had hurt her. “He figured out, you lay low,” Mr. Epstein said.

The Chicago law faculty is full of intellectually fiery friendships that burn across ideological lines. Three times a week, professors do combat over lunch at a special round table in the university’s faculty club, and they share and defend their research in workshop discussions. Mr. Obama rarely attended, even when he was in town.

“I’m not sure he was close to anyone,” Mr. Hutchinson said, except for a few liberal constitutional law professors, like Cass Sunstein, now an occasional adviser to his campaign. Mr. Obama was working two other jobs, after all, in the State Senate and at a civil rights law firm.

Several colleagues say Mr. Obama was surely influenced by the ideas swirling around the law school campus: the prevailing market-friendliness, or economic analysis of the impact of laws. But none could say how. “I’m not sure we changed him,” Mr. Baird said.

Because he never fully engaged, Mr. Obama “doesn’t have the slightest sense of where folks like me are coming from,” Mr. Epstein said. “He was a successful teacher and an absentee tenant on the other issues.”

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This is a disaster:

The Doha round of global trade talks, now in its seventh year, broke up without agreement yesterday after nine days of tense negotiations.

Divisions between the US, India and China about access to the agricultural markets of the developing world could not be overcome and the talks ground to a halt, scuppering efforts by Pascal Lamy, director-general of the World Trade Organisation, to broker a compromise.

The failure of the talks marks the third summer in a row that ministers have left a high-profile summit empty-handed. Several ministers and officials admitted that any substantive progress would now have to wait until a new US president was in the White House.

The breakdown followed marathon negotiating sessions among ministers from the world’s leading economies, with the talks running on long after their original schedule. Tempers occasionally flared during the meetings, with the US and China accusing each other of not making enough concessions.

Yet, in the immediate aftermath, there was relatively little trading of blame.

Susan Schwab, US trade representative, said the US remained committed to the Doha round, which was launched in 2001. “This is not a time to talk about collapse,” she said. “The US commitments remain on the table.”

Peter Mandelson, EU trade commissioner, said: “I realise that you will ask who is to blame for this failure. The answer of course is that it is a collective failure.” But Mr Mandelson said the agriculture talks had been harmed by the five-year programme of subsidies passed by the US Congress, which was “one of the most reactionary farm bills in the history of the US”.

Mandelson is dead right but what I worry about is that with the collapse of the Doha round, protectionists will be emboldened enough to try to hammer against other parts of the free trade system that has been so painstakingly created over the past few decades. And with the possibility that Barack Obama may become President of the United States and further slow down free trade efforts–assisted, of course, by an economically antediluvian Congress–the protectionists must feel that time is on their side in this fight.

Which it may well be. Of course, many people won’t realize that the protectionists have the argument over trade completely wrong until enough poverty has hit enough places and enough people to remind the world that the protectionist ideology should long ago have gone the way of the dinosaur.

The show is about to start. Use the comment thread to weigh in.

Check this out. Wired blogger Sarah Lai Strickland has a look at the GOP’s Facebook parody site of Obama. In it, she notes:

Rezko, a Chicago landlord, *most recently was in the headlines for being on trial for corruption*. Ayers, now a university professor, was a member of the violent 1960s group The Weather Underground, and Katz, now a public-relations consultant, was a former student activist involved in sometimes-violent Vietnam War protests against the police. Rezko is a campaign donor, Ayers sat on the board of a charity with Obama, and Katz is a fund-raiser.

How about Rezko was convicted on 16 counts in a federal corruption trial.

Oh, and how about Barack Obama got his start in elected office in Bill Ayers’s living room.

Let’s not forget Marilyn Katz who was not just “involved in” the protests. She marched in 1968 at the Democratic National Convention, through nails in the street to obstruct police, and championed a “Democratic Socialist paradise.”

Ted Stevens (R-AK) has been indicted by a federal grand jury on 7 counts. While people are innocent until proven guilty, we know enough facts to suggest Mr. Stevens is going to be looking for a deal.

And the voters of Alaska, committed to reform, are going to throw him out of office.

This is one seat that should stay in Republican hands. It will not, however, if Ted Stevens decides to hang on.

For the longest time Ted Stevens has done all things for the good of Ted Stevens. Now is the time for him to fall on his sword and take one for the GOP team.

Ted Stevens must resign.